By The Washington Office on Latin America, Latin America Working Group Education Fund, Due Process of Law Foundation, and Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA

Guatemala’s justice system has been co-opted by a network of corrupt political, economic, and military elites seeking to advance their own interests and to ensure that their acts of corruption and grave human rights violations from the armed conflict remain in impunity, while silencing voices from civil society organizations and independent media. Honest judges and prosecutors have been criminalized, threatened, removed, or transferred from their posts by the very institutions supposed to be advancing the rule of law and justice. Twenty-five judges and prosecutors, including the nation’s lead anti-corruption prosecutor, have fled the country into exile. The impacts of the co-optation of Guatemala’s justice system will set the country back decades. 

This report, produced by Washington Office on Latin America, Latin America Working Group Education Fund, Due Process of Law Foundation, and Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA, provides analysis on the steps taken to undermine Guatemala’s justice system from the stacking of its highest courts with corrupt judges to the co-opting and dismantling of the Attorney General’s Office and specialized prosecutors’ offices. It explains the longer-term implications of the ousting of honest judges and prosecutors and a broken justice system for the rule of law, transitional justice and protecting freedom of expression and the rights of marginalized communities in Guatemala.

Washington, DC: The Authors, 2022. 10p.

By The Washington Office on Latin America, Latin America Working Group Education Fund, and Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA

In Guatemala, human rights defenders, independent judges and prosecutors, journalists, and Indigenous leaders are under assault as part of a broader attack on democracy and path towards a kleptocracy. The criminalization and closing of civic space is one of the strategies being used by corrupt networks, the Attorney General’s Office, private actors, members of the military, and political elites to quell disruptions to their power, avoid historic responsibility for crimes committed during the internal armed conflict, and silence voices exposing corruption. It has resulted in severe democratic backsliding, creating a dangerous terrain in which human rights defenders, journalists, Indigenous community leaders, and justice operators receive no State protection and are instead persecuted and criminalized by their own government in complicity with private actors, often to the point of having to flee the country for their lives. The current situation in Guatemala creates serious challenges for U.S. policy and assistance and means that civil society organizations, human rights defenders, Indigenous communities, and journalists are more in need of international protection than ever.

Washington, DC: The Authors, 2022. 8p.

By The Washington Office on Latin America, Latin America Working Group, and Guatemala Human Rights

  With the support of the international community, Guatemala was making progress in strengthening the rule of law. Today, rule of law in Guatemala is on a dramatic downward spiral. A handful of corrupt political, military, and economic elites seeking to maintain their privileges at the expense of Guatemala’s Indigenous majority population have captured the state. They have systematically dismantled anti-corruption mechanisms such as UN-led CICIG and the special anti-corruption prosecutor’s office and infiltrated the justice system, starting at the top. Independent media, human rights defenders, and Indigenous leaders have been targeted and civic space restricted. Corruption is pervasive, depriving the population of access to basic public services, and few independent actors remain able to confront it. U.S. policy is also undermined. The United States needs to consider a range of policy tools to counter such a broad challenge to basic democratic values in Guatemala.   

Washington, DC: The Authors, 2022. 7p.

By Phyllis Dininio

The USAID Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation (DCHA/CMM) commissioned Management Systems International (MSI) to conduct research on the relationship between organized crime, conflict and fragility. The year-long research project included a literature review and country case studies in Guatemala, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that examine the interaction between organized criminality and USAID conflict and fragility programming in both causal directions—with regard to how criminality affects USAID implementation and results, and how assistance affects criminality. ..The report concludes with a set of key findings and recommendations. Organized crime is both facilitated by, and contributor to, state fragility.

Arlington, VA: Management Systems International, 2015. 61p.